Democrats Declare Victory in District Held by GOP for Nearly 30 Years

Democrats have declared victory in a Pennsylvania state House seat that Republicans held for nearly 30 years.

In a special election for the state House’s 12th District seat, Democrat Brandon Dukes is leading over Republican Scott Timko by less than 100 votes, 8,434 to 8,346, with 99 percent of votes counted.

Dukes told the local Cranberry Eagle Tuesday night, “I’m ecstatic. I’m shocked.”

“I’m still processing this. We just flipped a Trump plus-18 seat, and we flipped a red seat that’s been red for almost 30 years. We made history,” Dukes said.

Dukes, a commercial loan administrator at TD Bank, will face off again in the November general election against Timko, a retired Air Force captain, commercial pilot and former small business owner. For now, though, Democrats are declaring victory in a deep-red Pennsylvania county that also happens to be close to where a gunman tried to assassinate President Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign.

“Tonight’s result not only shows what can be accomplished when Democrats are willing to fight everywhere, but it sets the stage for this November’s midterm elections,” said Eugene DePasquale, chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, in a statement. “Pennsylvanians across the political spectrum are sick and tired of Republicans’ chaotic, corrupt, and cost-raising agenda—and they’re ready to reject them at the polls and elect Democrats up and down the ballot in historic fashion.”

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, also celebrated Dukes’s win.

“Pennsylvanians are rising up and using their power to combat the chaos, cruelty, and corruption—and we’re not slowing down. I was proud to back Brandon,” Shapiro posted Tuesday night. “Congratulations State Representative-Elect Dukes—I look forward to getting stuff done together.🇺🇲”

If Democrats can keep this momentum, it not only bodes well for the November midterms, but also for 2028.

Senate Darline Graham—sister of the late Lindsey Graham—had a debate performance so poor it should leave the GOP even less sure about her than they already were.

Graham appeared on the debate stage Tuesday evening with her runoff election opponent, Representative Ralph Norman.

“Senator, are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States?” a moderator asked Graham.

“Um, I’m sorry, could you repeat the question?” Graham asked. It was repeated. 

“I’m just gonna be honest here. I’m not on national security that—I’m not that informed on national security,” Graham said, suggesting that she has no idea what’s going on with Taiwan and the South China Sea. “But I do support the military. My brother was in the Air Force for 33 years, so I will do everything I can to support the military. My dad was in the Army, I’m not a polished politician up here. National security is not my thing, not my area of expertise. But I do support the military.”

The clip is genuinely a rough watch, and Graham was duly lambasted for it online. 

“I’ve seen politicians reveal their ignorance with terrible answers, but have never seen a Senate candidate openly admit they’re ‘not that informed on national security,’” journalist Ahmed Baba wrote on X. “An answer that should disqualify her from the nom. But who knows. We’re year 10 into American idiocracy.”

“This is painful to watch. ‘I’m not that informed on the economy, but I support people having money’ would be roughly the equivalent,” Billy Binion of the libertarian magazine Reason wrote. “I’m sincerely sorry for Darline Graham’s loss. But being related to a former lawmaker is not a qualification for the Senate.”

It’s entirely reasonable to expect someone running for Senate to have some kind of familiarity with Taiwan and China’s territorial conflict. Graham admitted she had none, while Norman offered up an actual answer.

“Taiwan’s a definite ally, and we have a trading relationship with them that is beneficial to the United States, chips being one of them—and others,” he said. “What the president is doing right is he’s enabling Taiwan to defend themselves against China. But it’s peace through strength that he’s showing.... They don’t wanna deal with America, and that’s why they haven’t attacked Taiwan. If they had some weak Democrat in office … [China] would take it over. But we can’t let them.” 

In the same debate, Graham also said that there were 50 million people living in South Carolina. There are only 5.6 million.  

A group of religious extremists are planning a “Christian Crusader March” in  Dearborn, Michigan, Tuesday evening, and Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib, whose district includes Dearborn, called out the lack of response to the demonstration, noting the relentless Islamophobic attacks on the city.

“Islamophobia is a problem among both Democrats and Republicans,” Tlaib posted on X Monday night. “The silence in Michigan among state leaders while one of the largest cities in the state is being terrorized by Islamophobes is shameful.”

The march is being led by extremist and provocateur Jake Lang, a January 6 rioter pardoned by President Trump who keeps returning to the city to harass its large Muslim and Arab community. In November, he tried to lead another march and got punched in the face. He was also arrested in June for “terroristic threats” in Texas and in February in Minnesota for destroying an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement ice sculpture. 

Senator Elissa Slotkin stepped up following Tlaib’s post, saying Tuesday morning that “The people of Dearborn are once again under attack from an out-of-state influencer looking for controversy.

“The Mayor [Abdullah Hammoud], the Police Chief, and religious leaders of all faiths are again showing leadership and demonstrating that Michigan is united against hate and Islamophobia,” Slotkin posted. “Dearborn is as Michigan as it gets, and as Police Chief Issa Shahin said, these individuals are coming for one reason and one reason alone: To provoke a reaction. The most powerful thing this community can do is give them an audience. Don’t give them the satisfaction.” 

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who is the Democratic nominee for governor, also spoke up for Dearborn, saying Tuesday afternoon that “It’s a city full of hardworking, proud, patriotic Michiganders—and hard as they might try, these out-of-state agitators cannot change that. And we will not let their hate drive us apart.”

Whitmer issued a statement Tuesday calling Lang and his supporters “a group of agitators” who are “traveling to Dearborn for the sole purpose of intimidating that community and provoking a reaction,” urging local residents not to engage with them.  

Attorney General Dana Nessel hasn’t issued a statement over the march. On Monday, Hammoud responded to a reporter’s question by calling on Nessel to consider hate crimes charges against Lang. 

“I would take that question and actually channel it towards our attorney general to see what she may do with her hate crimes unit to see if there’s anything that can be levied against these agitators and provocateurs that come to Dearborn time and time again,” Hammoud said.

Outside of Michigan, national Democratic figures such as House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are silent. Meanwhile, Dearborn’s Christian and Muslim faith leaders are uniting against the hatred directed at their city. 

Just a reminder: No, President Donald Trump did not save Natalie Harp’s life.

As the president’s close relationship with his female aide has come under scrutiny, a litany of MAGA social media accounts have jumped to her defense. Notably, numerous accounts have claimed their relationship is nothing if not honorable—after all, Harp credits Trump’s 2018 Right to Try Act with saving her life.

In an emotional address at the 2020 Republican National Convention, Harp claimed that after she was diagnosed with stage 2 bone cancer, she was a beneficiary of Trump’s policy intended to give patients access to experimental medical treatments.

“When I failed the chemotherapies that were on the market, no one wanted me in their clinical trials,” Harp said. “They didn’t give me the right to try experimental treatments, Mr. President. You did, and without you, I’d have died waiting for them to be approved.”

But experts have long cast doubt on Harp’s supposedly heartwrenching story.

Harp claimed she received “an FDA-approved immunotherapy drug for an unapproved use,” but Trump’s Right to Try law only applies to drugs that have not been approved by the FDA. Healthcare providers were already allowed to prescribe FDA-approved drugs for off-label uses long before Trump ever entered office.

In reality, Trump’s Right to Try was a massive failure—a repackaging of the expanded access that patients already had with decreased federal oversight. The president’s claims that the program has saved thousands of lives couldn’t be further from the truth. The most recent report shows the policy supported access to only six drugs in 2025.

Years after helping him sell his lame duck policy, Harp is still glued to Trump’s side. After the president tapped his “human binkie” to join him on his secret flight out of Turkey last month, people are starting to suggest there may be more to the story—and the White House’s wild reaction did little to ease concerns.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used an anti-LGBTQ slur completely unprompted at an Iowa State Fair on Monday, referring to transgender people as “trannies.”

“At the Department of War, we do training, not trannies,” he said at a Salute to the Troops military fundraiser at the fair, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported. The event was initially supposed to be in March, but was delayed when two Iowa service members were killed in an Iranian airstrike that Hegseth downplayed at the time

“It is a day and night difference,” he continued. “Training, lethality, accountability, discipline, readiness—the bedrock of what it means to be an American warrior—is the only focus of our department. Colorblind, gender-neutral, merit-based. That’s it.”

Transgender people have become a constant target of the right’s outrage machine. The Trump administration has made them the focus of many of its cultural attacks in the war on “woke,” casting trans people as an imminent threat to Western values even as they make up less than 1 percent of the U.S. adult population. That political disdain is embodied in perhaps no one more than Hegseth, who casually tosses out slurs and recently introduced mandatory testosterone screening for older soldiers.

Last year, President Trump signed an executive order banning transgender and nonbinary people from the military, calling them purveyors of “radical gender” ideologies that were “not honorable,” “truthful,” or “disciplined.” The Supreme Court upheld the order in May, though legal challenges continue in the lower courts.

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” the order read—equating gender dysphoria with mental illness and moral deficiency, and assuming that your assigned gender at birth has something to do with how well you can fight a war.